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Free messaging. And nowadays free calls- when my brother calls me from Japan he uses WhatsApp. I have no idea how they make money but I'm not complaining.

Imagine a time when telcos literally demanded 50 cents for every time you asked "where are you".

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Yep, its popularity basically matches up with places where SMS cost money. It's ended up being a work around the ridiculous telecom billing.

It's meta. They make money from advertising.

there are no adverts on whatsapp

But Facebook collects your interactions, adds them to your (shadow) profile, and sells this marketing data to advertisers.

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